misophist -

Presuming you're referring to the Virtual Keyboard: The character selector only shows you the characters that go with the "keyboard" you're set up to use. There are some characters shown on the selector for which you don't have a key, but the keyboard selected for use and the "languages" installed will change what characters show up there.

If you change "keyboards" it is likely that keys (sometimes many of them) will type characters other than what you're used to, and some things will be in different places. Character selector doesn't tell you "where the h.. is it on that new keyboard I just turned on." What keys are moved if I switch from "Canadian Standard" to "Canadian Multilingual," for example? (I don't really need to know, now; but those are just two readily available "keyboards.")

The VK isn't a "for everybody" thing, and may only work with Word2000, but a few people with special needs have asked for help with characters that most of us don't need.

John